An ink cartridge for storing ink is detachably mounted to an inkjet printer that ejects ink onto a recording medium such as a recording paper to record a desired image. Such an inkjet printer has a problem that ink leaks from the ink cartridge and contaminates the surrounding area when mounting or removing the ink cartridge.
An ink outlet port is for supplying ink. The ink outlet port opens, for example, when the ink cartridge is unsealed and mounted to the printer or when the empty ink cartridge is removed from the printer and is discarded. If vibration is applied to the ink cartridge, ink may leak from the ink outlet port to contaminate surrounding area.
Various ink cartridge have been proposed in order to prevent leakage of ink from the unsealed ink cartridge. For example, an ink cartridge disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 06-328713 has a slide plate. The slide plate is attached to the side wall of the ink cartridge in a slidable manner so as to seal or open an ink outlet port (connection opening) formed in the side wall. The ink outlet port is closed by the slide plate when the ink cartridge is not mounted. At the time of use of the ink cartridge, the slide plate is slid to open the ink outlet port immediately before the ink cartridge is mounted to the printer.